Sunday, June 09, 2013

'Road To Hell' (Streets of Fire 2) May Be the Strangest Sequel Ever Made

I haven't seen Road To Hell but it the concept is so fascinating that I want to. The movie is now playing the festival circuit. The official website states that Road To Hell will be officially released later this year. The question is what kind of market will there be for a dark art house sequel to the 1984 cult classic Streets of Fire.

The trailer to Strees of Fire.

Streets of Fire bombed at the box office. It gained a cult following because the movie is visually amazing. The rock music scenes are some of the best ever filmed. The actors are lip-syncing but there is a great intensity in their performances. The Blasters even make a musical cameo in a biker bar.

Director Walter Hill planned for Streets of Fire to be the first movie in a trillogy of the adventures of mercenaries Tom Cody and McCoy. The characters are played in the movie by Michael Pare and Amy Madigan. At the end of the movie Cody and McCoy leave Cody's hometown in a stolen car. The next two movies were suppose to be The Far City and Cody's Return. Hill never got the opportunity to make the movies since Streets of Fire wasn't a box office hit.

I love Streets of Fire. It is probably one of the most expensive B movies ever made. The movie has a great energy level and a weird cinematic alternative universe. Cars, music, and the way people talk all exist in different eras. Roger Ebert noted the dialogue.

The language is strange, too: It's tough, but not with 1984 toughness. It sounds like the way really mean guys would have talked in the late 1950s, only with a few words differentÑas if this world evolved a slightly different language. The performances fit this world nicely.

Cody and McCoy talk like this the most. Even when there is a scene when Cody tells McCoy not to point a gun at him. Both characters tend to deal with people through intimadation and insults. Willem DaFoe's bad guy biker Raven can't compete on a dialogue level. DaFoe does make his best attempt to chew scenery. This is the face of an actor more than happy to go over the top.

Streets of Fire had a cool vibe. Cody and McCoy seemed bad ass. There is a fun scene where a guy tries to cut Cody with a butterfly knife. Cody takes the knife from the punk, gives it back and tells him to try again. There is also the fight with railroad hammers near the end of the movie. Cody drops his hammer after he disarms Raven. Cody proceeds to beat him barehanded. Streets of Fire exists in the alternative universe of cool.

We now get to Albert Pyun's unofficial sequel to Streets of Fire called Road To Hell. Pyun and his wife explained the concept behind the sequel.

Cynthia mentioned that it was the result of an argument that she and Albert had had about the ending of Streets of Fire. Albert had thought it was one of the most romantic endings of all time. Cynthia thought it was deeply tragic and showed that Tom Cody was doomed. She wrote "Road to Hell" to show what she thought would have happened to him.

This is the trailer to Road To Hell.

In Road To Hell we see a potentially insane Cody capture two women that killed patrons at the strip clubs that they worked at. It is hinted that Cody killed McCoy. I don't think Walter Hill ever pictured the sequel to Streets of Fire being a low budget art house version of Natural Born Killers. The reaction online have been fascinating. One review described the movie as being extremely brutal.

The film is divided into two halves. The first half is the crazed, nightmarish portion that feels completely out of tune to what made Streets of Fire so interesting. It has Cody meeting two blonde female thrill killers on the shoulder of a stretch of desert in the middle of what might very well be hell itself. Cody exhibits some very out-of-character behavior such as punching women (repeatedly) in the face, tying them up, berating them and stripping them, and later resorts to startling and unexpected murder. If this is the same Cody from Streets of Fire, I’d like to see the flashbacks that made him this way. The scenes within this first portion of the film are haphazardly presented, but still strangely compelling in their hot and fevered manic depravity. This is the half that fans of Streets of Fire are going to hate. Luckily, I’m not a big fan of Streets of Fire so I was able to be objective and see the entire film as simply a movie of its own, but more importantly as an ALBERT PYUN film. I went with the strange flow, which led to the second half of the movie.

Road To Hell may actually be a horrible movie. Whatever it is it sounds ballsy.

Two songs from the Streets of Fire performed by the Roxy Gunn Project. Lead singer Gunn plays Cody's estranged daughter in RTH.

11 Comments:

You sound like the perfect audience for ROAD TO HELL. I made the film to be a study of an iconic character 28 years after we last saw him. I think it has a lot of truth and pain in it. I was always struck when I saw Streets of Fire a an early studio screening, how original and different it was. I wanted Road To Hell to be the same. Not a rehash or recreation of SoF but something totally original and as daring as SoF was. Hope you get to see it on the big screen!

I need to see this movie I have been searching for it everywhere possible in the internet and apparently it's not available on DVD or anywhere for me to see. Does anybody know when the Road to Hell will be out for the public to see I cannot wait to see this movie. I am A true friend I really love Streets of Fire movie.